Ocorreu um acidente com o avião sub-orbital SpaceShipTwo durante um teste levado a cabo na tarde do dia 31 de Outubro de 2014.
A bordo encontravam-se dois pilotos, tendo um deles falecido e o outro sido transportado para o hospital em estado grave. Não são conhecidas as identidades dos pilotos. Relatos iniciais que referiam a presença a bordo e um terceiro elemento não se confirmaram.
A SpaceShipTwo, da Virgin Galactic e desenvolvida pela Scaled Composites, encontrava-se a realizar um teste propulsionado sobre o Deserto de Mojave, Califórnia, com a anomalia a ocorrer após a ignição do seu motor e depois de ter sido largado do avião WhiteKnightTwo.
Mais informações aqui.
4 comentários
Passar directamente para o formulário dos comentários,
Um artigo curioso:
“The new space race: Beating Branson with balloons”
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/the-new-space-race-beating-branson-with-balloons-572538.html?page=0
Sugestão:
Why space tourism is worth the risk
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429943.100-why-space-tourism-is-worth-the-risk.html#.VFyFaWd_vXo
Saliento algumas passagens desse pequeno artigo de opinão:
There’s a tradition of euphemism in space flight: think of “Houston, we’ve had a problem”.
That’s partly born of reluctance to jump to conclusions when the situation is unclear; it’s also rooted in the mindset that any deviation from the plan, no matter how dramatic, must be examined and explained.
As Space Race test pilots put it: “To err is human, to forgive is divine; neither is Air Force policy.”
That mentality has never been clearer than in the aftermath of the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986.
The combination of fault-finding, wounded national pride and budget constraints led to a cooling of political backing for crewed space flight from which NASA has never really recovered.
By contrast, the SpaceShipTwo crash, while obviously tragic for those involved, is ultimately an industrial accident – one that the company, and industry, should learn from.
That’s the attitude needed if human space travel is ever to become routine, as many hope it will.
The huge expense and frequent accidents of early aviation did not stop the well-heeled from getting on planes, followed by the rest of us.
History may repeat itself.
Should it?
Air travel is a means to an end, whereas today’s space tourism is an end in itself.
When it comes to knowledge, real progress lies with robots.
Next to that, space tourism might look like no more than an enviable indulgence.
But we won’t know what space really has to offer humanity until more of us can go there.
That means making space travel safer – and that implies the cycle of investigation and improvement that has made air travel what it is today.
Anomalies will happen.
They shouldn’t deter us – as long as we learn from them, that is.
É pessoal, assim que fica muito obvio a nossa inferioridade tecnológica à séculos de existência, não conseguimos nem dar uma volta completa um pouco mais distante e já vai tudo para os ares!! e ainda tem “gente” que fica se gabando achando que somos os “tal” etc… enquanto isso, milhares de ufos vão e voltam em qualquer parte do universo e entram e saiam na nossa casa planetária com a maior facilidade sem ser incomodado por nós a seu bel prazer!! ainda engatinhamos pessoal!! abraço.
Adiciono que o objectivo desta missão era o de testar um novo tipo de combustível (mistura), supostamente mais eficiente.